A miracle butterfly in January.
I found it alive in my basement. 15 below outside.
Caring and empathy indoors.

January 2011


It Feels Like a Miracle

There's a butterfly - alive - in my basement.

January 5. I go down to the basement, something I have to do often to put wood in the furnace. It's minus 15 outside. There's a small, vivid, glossy black shape on one of the logs. It doesn't move. I don't touch it, also don't touch the log.

The next morning, I'm back. The black shape has moved, is definitely a beautiful butterfly with vivid bright markings against its glossy black.

The odds against its emerging from its cocoon alive are enormous.

The wood was stacked outdoors for months, from April to October. In October, it was brought into the basement. Lots of rough handling. Lots of the wood got tossed into the basement from outside. Not the wood in the corner where I found the butterfly.

Then, had it not emerged when it did, it would have ended up in the furnace. The log where I found it was due to be burned in the next couple of days.

And there are lots of corners in the basement. Had it not been where it was, I would never have seen it - and so I would not have gone on to Google to find out what butterflies eat. There's no water, no food anywhere in the basement.

What do butterflies eat, by the way? Rotting fruit, for the most part. Sugar water - one part sugar, forty parts water.

And that brings me to empathy. Seeing the butterfly alive brought out my wanting to take care of it.

Suddenly it was a priority to find out what it needed to stay alive. Suddenly I checked my little compost container. Yes, there it was - a banana peel. Maybe that would appeal to the butterfly. And a few blueberries from the freezer - fine now, but they will slowly go mushy and become butterfly food.

And I'm careful, now, going down into the basement. I don't want to accidentally squash the little creature.

I have a blind, almost deaf, one-toothed cat. I found her in the barn. And as with the butterfly, caring kicked in.

Caring and empathy - so vital.

**

Just what are these things, I ask myself. The words are strong in my mind, but I don't have a hard dictionary definition. So I turn to Encarta:

empathy:

- the ability to identify with and understand another person’s feelings or difficulties;
- the transfer of your own feelings and emotions to an object such as a painting.

caring:

- compassion;
- the show of concern for others;
- the provision of care.

How would I define empathy? What words come into my mind? Resonating with another, with what I feel are their feelings and needs.

And caring, how would I define that? Wanting to care for another, to take care of another. Sometimes it's linked with empathy. Sometimes it flourishes without empathy, just with the sense that the other is alive, and something in me wants the other to stay alive, so I take care.

**

Empathy and caring. They're crucial, for me. They're at the core of my understanding of ethics, religion, spirituality. Without them, there can be cold care-taking. But why be care-taking, if we don't care?

In my vision of spirituality and religion, if there is any cosmic force, it wants us to become so empathic that it becomes natural to take on taking good care of this planet - of each other, of the animals, of all of nature.

That is the only way, from all I know of the world, that we will ever manage to turn this world into a garden. Evolution has done a lot - but massive suffering is part of it. Lack of empathy for many others is part of it. The lion cannot be consumed by feelings of empathy for the prey it hunts.

It is only we humans, as far as I can see, who may be able to create a world where lions can be nourished without the hunting down of prey. And it is only we humans, again as far as I can see, who might be able to create a world where balance is achieved - through birth control, for instance - without hunting and starvation being essential to keeping a balance.

**

So, again, it's my profound conviction that empathy and caring are crucial - are the major underpinnings of any cause for hope for this planet.

They don't just matter for the planet. Empathy is key in my understanding of what we need to be close to each other. We need to be able to resonate with each other, rather than see very little of the other, be cut off from each other, caught in our own little world.

**

That brings me to creativity, especially those which connect us most deeply with others and with ourselves - stories, poetry, music. Art, by bringing us more alive, also brings us to more hope that we can get to the changes we need to make this a world a home for us all.

And now I want to go check on the butterfly - especially, I think I haven't put enough sugar in its water, want to get that right. Plus, while I've given a small breakfast to TiChat, my blind cat (she gets special food, as she has developed trouble eating a regular cat diet), I know she's up for seconds.

May we, together, make this a home world for us all.

It's from empathy that I expect we can change the world for the better.

As always, all the best,

Elsa

January 2011

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Several years later, I looked back on my experience with the butterfly in January. Here's my memory of the miracle butterfly.